Electronic commerce is an increasingly popular way of selling products and services, referred to herein collectively and interchangeably as “items,” to consumers. To assist consumers in selecting products and services, many electronic commerce vendors provide recommendations to consumers. For example, consumers who are shopping for books may be provided recommendations to books that are similar or complementary to the books that they are browsing. Most such recommendations are based on prior consumer activities, such as user behavior data, e.g., records of items purchased together or common items viewed by the same consumers and focus on recommending substitute or complementary items.
While some of these recommendations may assist consumers in making purchase decisions or discovering new items, these recommendations are not based on the content of the items. For certain types of items such as books, it may be desirable for consumers to receive recommendations that are based at least in part on the content of the items, rather than solely on user behavior data.